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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22864411">Understood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and'>Celia_and</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(smirking face emoji), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bathing/Washing, Bathtubs, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Google translate but make it sexy, Hopelessly lost American movie star Ben, Language Barrier, Love at First Sight, Paris (City), Sassy Parisian Rey, Smut, Vaginal Sex, Wall Sex, You're too big to sleep on my sofa...but not in my bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:07:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,866</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22864411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Maybe she can burn his clothes and keep him as a pet, wrapped in sheets and curled up at the foot of her bed. Maybe the world won’t notice if he never comes back. Maybe there isn’t a world, anymore, outside this apartment. Maybe she’s the universe.</em> </p><p>----------</p><p>American movie star Ben Solo gets lost in Paris.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>188</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>847</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Perdu | Lost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><em>Note:</em> Much of Rey’s French is translated for Ben in the story, but for the lines that aren’t, desktop/laptop users can mouse over the hyperlinked text for a translation if you prefer!</p><p>Moodboard by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nancylovesreylo">Nancylovesreylo</a>.</p><p><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moongrim">Moongrim</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erateini">Erateini</a> both provided invaluable French language and culture consultations—merci beaucoup, mes chéries! 🤗</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Ben feels like the kid from <em>Home Alone.</em> In the bustle and complications of the evening, everyone assumed that he was in someone else’s care, and the result was that he somehow ended up being left behind on his own. Except he’s not an eight-year-old boy at home. He’s a 32-year-old movie star who doesn’t speak a word of French, in Paris. With a dead phone. At midnight. He’d rather deal with the burglars.</p><p>When he ascertains that he has in fact been deserted by his entourage, he leaves the restaurant without much doubt that he’ll be able to find a main road and hail a taxi. He doesn’t actually know the name of the hotel to direct the driver if he could’ve found a taxi, but that’s irrelevant at this point because he’s thoroughly, utterly lost.</p><p>If only any of the intersections were at right angles, he could methodically work his way toward one of the big boulevards. But just when he thinks he’s going in the right direction, the street curves and deposits him at another crossroads. It’s getting chilly enough that he doesn’t particularly want to stand still. And the farther his feet in their thin-soled dress shoes take him, the farther into a not-great neighborhood he seems to progress.</p><p>Blisters are forming on both of his heels, so he can’t even limp in such a way as to favor one of them. The more cold and exhausted he gets, the more the night slips sideways into the hazy quality of a nightmare. He just wants a bed. Behind a securely locked door. With some heating. He doesn’t need the five-star hotel, he just needs to sleep without being mugged. Muggers wouldn’t get much out of him, anyway. There’s a certain level of fame that apparently precludes carrying one’s own valuables, and Ben reached that point a couple years before. No cash, not even an ID, because in all the circles he spends time in now, his face is his ID. At least his watch is worth a couple grand. And for a mugger he’d even throw in the shoes, which may be blood-stained at this point. They would probably fetch a nice price on eBay: there are people who are into that sort of thing. There are people who are into <em>everything</em> about him, which feels suffocating at times, but right now he wouldn’t mind someone recognizing him and shepherding him safely to a hotel in return for the promise of a generous reward. Ben considers. He would probably part with half a million, right now, for a place to sleep. Give it another fifteen minutes, and he could be talked into a million.</p><p>At some point, half-delirious, he realizes that he actually has to make a plan. Either he needs to commit to wandering the streets of Paris for the rest of the night or he needs to ask someone for help. He hasn’t passed any likely candidates so far, because the kind of people you would trust to help you at two a.m. in a seedy neighborhood aren’t generally <em>outside</em> at two a.m. in a seedy neighborhood. He starts eyeing the apartment buildings that line the narrow street. Most of them are dark, which isn’t surprising at this time of night, and none looks any less unwelcoming than the next.</p><p>Until he sees a light shining invitingly from an upstairs window. And a window box. With <em>flowers.</em> He stumbles numbly to what he hopes is the corresponding door and rings the doorbell. Now that he’s stopped moving, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to start again. If the resident turns him away he’ll just have to sleep on their doorstep.</p><p>There’s no answer. He rings the bell again, hoping that the nice grandmotherly lady who undoubtedly lives there is just taking a while to get down the stairs.</p><p>He hears a female voice from inside and footsteps on the stairs. <a>“Eh, oh qui va là? Qu’est ce qui se passe à cette heure-ci?”</a> Her voice is quiet enough that he thinks she’s probably talking to herself and not him, and besides, he has no idea what she’s saying.</p><p>There’s the sound of a lock unbolting, but the door only opens a couple inches. A sliver of light filters out. All he can see is an eye and the edge of a nose. <a>“On est au beau milieu de la nuit! Partez ou j’appelle à la police! Allez! Laissez-moi tranquille!”</a></p><p>He’s not entirely sure, but he thinks she said <em>police.</em> At least if they put him in jail he might have somewhere to lie down. “Please,” he pleads, and his body picks that moment to start shivering violently, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French, but can you please help me?”</p><p>The door doesn’t open any wider, but at least it doesn’t close. The eye appraises him. <a>“Un américain saoul à ma porte, il ne manquait plus que ça,”</a> she says under her breath. To him, she adds: <a>“Vous devez partir, vous comprenez?”</a></p><p>“I have nowhere to go. Can you please help me? I’ll pay you, I promise. Money.” He rubs his fingers and thumb together in what he hopes is the international symbol for money, and she scoffs an outraged protest and pulls back from the door. “No!” he exclaims, “Wait! Not like <em>that.</em> I don’t think you’re a prostitute. If that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m just so cold and tired, and I’m asking you to please help me. Help me,” he repeats helplessly, feeling like a pathetic little boy.</p><p>The eye blinks. Then the door closes. Ben is about to cry with disappointment and exhaustion when he hears the rattle of a chain lock, and then the door opens all the way.</p><p>He isn’t sure how much of this vision is a delirious haze.</p><p>The woman is backlit by the light above the stairs behind her, and it gives her brown hair an angelic glow. Her face is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, even drawn as it is into a quizzical frown. Instead of the kindly grandmother he’d been hoping for, this woman is dreams made flesh. The thought unmoors him.</p><p>“Eh bien?” she asks impatiently. <a>“Vous allez entrer ou rester là à regarder?”</a> She turns and starts to walk back up the stairs, and in his daze Ben takes that as permission to come in. He wipes his feet on the doormat and closes the door behind him, fumbling with the bolt and replacing the chain lock. By the time his numb hands complete the task she’s already made it upstairs and disappeared. He slowly follows, with the unnerving sense that his destiny is waiting for him at the top of those stairs.</p><p>His feet carry him up, protesting with each step. When he reaches the top he stops to make sure his legs won’t give out and looks around. Her apartment is the definition of <em>home.</em> A shabby red velvet sofa, bookcases stuffed to overflowing with books and potted plants, and a shag rug laid diagonally across the slightly sloping wood floor. Framed art covers nearly every available inch on the walls, so he can only see the sunshine yellow of the paint beneath in a few places. There’s a cramped kitchen in one corner of the room, and a door that must lead to the bathroom. Through another doorway he can see a bed spilling white sheets that trail onto the floor. He swallows.</p><p>And then there’s <em>her,</em> completing the picture. She bustles around the space, looking for something, so Ben has the luxury of just watching her. She’s in a soft nightshirt whose hem drops down to brush her knees in the front and back, but the sides swoop up to an inverted V that gives a tantalizing glimpse of her thighs. Her hair is bundled into a messy knot on top of her head, and she’s barefoot. When she bends over the couch, rummaging around the cushions, the neckline of the nightshirt falls to reveal the sharp edge of one collarbone. He’d like to cut his lip on it. With supreme effort, he looks away.</p><p><a>“Tenez!”</a> she exclaims triumphantly, holding up her phone and coming over to him. “Qui voulez-vous appeler?”</p><p>“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I don’t understand.”</p><p>With an impatient huff, she unlocks the phone and starts navigating to something.</p><p>He would’ve given a million dollars for a bed. He would give <em>ten</em> million to speak French.</p><p>She types something in, and holds the phone out, he thinks for him to take. But then the even voice of the Google translate woman filters out: “Who do you want to call?”</p><p>He reaches out cautiously for the phone, and she hands to him after just a moment of hesitation. He types in, <em>I’m sorry, I don’t know the phone number of my friends.</em> The Google translate voice interprets.</p><p>She takes the phone back impatiently and types something else. The voice says, “Your phone is dead?” He nods. She types. “What kind do you have?”</p><p>He rummages in his pocket and pulls it out. She takes it and examines the bottom edge of both phones.</p><p>She hands his phone back and types in hers. “My charger won’t work. Where are you trying to go?” She holds her phone out, and he takes it.</p><p>He types, <em>I don’t remember the name of the hotel. I’m traveling with people who took care of all the plans.</em> The voice tells her.</p><p>She appraises him, then types. “Why didn’t you get a taxi to another hotel? You look like you can afford it.”</p><p>His fingers brush hers as he takes the phone, and his mouth goes dry. He types in, <em>I can afford it, but I don’t have any money on me.</em></p><p>She grabs the phone back and her fingers fly over the screen. The Google translate woman says, “How do you end up lost in a foreign city with a dead phone and no money?”</p><p>He thinks for a minute, then types, <em>People have been doing things for me for a long time. I’m not in the habit of being self-sufficient anymore.</em> He doesn’t need to tell her, except that he wants her to know him. The woman’s voice reads her the translation.</p><p>She bites her lip as she slowly takes the phone back. She types. “So what do you want me to do for you?”</p><p><em>Jesus. So many things.</em> He takes the phone that she extends to him and types, <em>I just need somewhere to sleep. Maybe in your stairwell? Then I can figure it out in the morning.</em></p><p>Her gaze appraises him from head to toe, and he wishes he didn’t look so bedraggled. He wishes he looked like he looked at the beginning of the evening. He wonders if she would’ve been attracted to <em>that</em> Ben, not the one standing at the top of her stairs in a wilted suit with hair probably matted from cold sweat.</p><p>She finishes her inspection and summons him with her hand. <a>“Viens.”</a> He follows obediently. His shoes rub unbearably at his blisters, but he tries not to limp. She opens the door to the bathroom and beckons inside, saying, “Prends un bain.” He looks at her quizzically, and she types in her phone. The Google translate woman instructs him, “Take a bath.”</p><p>A <em>bath.</em> What an unimaginable luxury. He doesn’t argue, just does as he’s told and steps into the bathroom. He sits down on the commode to take his shoes off, wincing as they rub over the sensitive skin. He grimaces as he peels his socks off. It’s not as bad as he feared: the skin at his heels is rubbed pink and raw, but there’s no blood. He leans over to turn on the tap to start filling the tub. It’s extravagantly oversized, a claw-footed porcelain relic that’s almost too big for the minuscule bathroom. It’s wedged up against three walls, and Ben is pretty sure someone cut a hole through the tile and into one of the walls to make the lip fit at one end. The toilet and sink are squeezed into the other two corners, practically on top of the bathtub. Steam starts to rise from the rush of water as the tub fills.</p><p>The air in the room gradually becomes hot and humid, and Ben starts to remember for the first time in hours what it’s like to feel warm. He eagerly strips off the rest of his clothes and steps into the water, wincing in pain as his blisters are submerged. He lowers himself to sit and leans forward to turn the tap off, then reclines and slides down until only his head isn’t underwater. The hot water envelops him, and he involuntarily lets out a moan of ecstasy. He can’t think of another time he experienced such pure and entire physical satisfaction. It’s better than sex.</p><p>This notion reminds him of the presence of his rescuer on the other side of the door. He doesn’t want to inconvenience her, so he grabs a bar of soap and starts easing it over his sore muscles. He doesn’t dare touch her shampoo, he just dunks his head under the water.</p><p>As he’s finishing it occurs to him that he doesn’t have a towel. Or clean clothes. He eyes his crumpled suit on the floor and tries to resign himself to putting it back on, but then a knock comes at the door. Before he can answer, it opens and a tanned arm slides through the gap, holding a towel and a bedsheet. <a>“Mets ça,”</a> she says, and drapes them over the edge of the sink just inside the door. Her arm retreats, and the door closes. He gets the message.</p><p>He pulls the plug to let the water drain, steps out of the tub, and dries himself with the threadbare towel. He wraps the sheet around himself as best he can, trying to remember techniques from toga parties in college. He wishes for real clothes, but if she had clothes that fit him that would mean she had a man in her life, and in her apartment. So he’ll gladly wear her sheets. Maybe she can burn his clothes and keep him as a pet, wrapped in sheets and curled up at the foot of her bed. Maybe the world won’t notice if he never comes back. Maybe there <em>isn’t</em> a world, anymore, outside this apartment. Maybe she’s the universe.</p><p>He folds his dirty clothes clumsily and leaves them in a pile on his shoes in the corner of the bathroom, under the sink. He emerges a bit self-consciously, and she glances up at him. Her eyes sweep over him briefly, and he thinks he sees a smile as she turns away, back to the postage stamp-sized kitchen counter where she’s pouring something into two mugs. She picks them up and carries them over to the sofa, beckoning him to follow with a jerk of her head. She lowers herself slowly onto one end with care for the contents of the mugs. He takes his place at the opposite end, careful not to jar her. She passes him a mug, saying, “Chocolat.”</p><p><em>Chocolat, </em>indeed. The first sip makes him angry at Swiss Miss for having the audacity to pretend that their little wax paper packets of powder could turn into hot chocolate, because compared to <em>this,</em> it’s really just sad brown water. <em>This</em> is a block of chocolate in liquid form. He doesn’t even question how she managed it. The mundane limitations of reality obviously don’t apply to this apartment, or this woman.</p><p>They sit in companionable silence, sipping their chocolate. Their hands are busy, so they can’t type. Ben sneaks a glance over at her, and he catches her looking at him. She doesn’t look away. He’s suspended in time for a moment, watching the flush of her skin from the heat of the chocolate. Still she doesn’t look away. His cock stirs inconveniently, and he turns away first.</p><p>Too soon, his chocolate is gone and he has nothing to occupy his hands but an empty mug. She hasn’t finished hers, but she still reaches over for his mug and sets them both on the end table next to her.</p><p><a>“Comment tu t’appelles?”</a> she asks slowly and clearly. He must look as lost as he feels, because she smiles and places a hand on her chest. “Renée,” she says.</p><p>“Oh! I’m Ben.”</p><p>“Ben,” she repeats, and he’s never thought his name beautiful until he hears it from her lips.</p><p>“Renay,” he tries, and she laughs.</p><p>“Rey,” she offers.</p><p>“Rey,” he repeats. His vowel feels ungainly compared to the clipped precision of hers, but she smiles her approval. He would do anything for that smile, he suspects.</p><p>“Qui es-tu?” she asks. He wants to burrow into her brain and understand, but he just looks at her helplessly. She picks up her phone, and after a few seconds of typing, the Google translate woman asks him, “Who are you?”</p><p>Rey repeats it, wrapping her mouth around the unfamiliar words: “Who are you?”</p><p>What can he say? <em>I’m a movie star. I’m an actor, but I don’t remember what it’s like to love what I do. I don’t even know if I’m any good at it, but at this point it doesn’t matter to anyone because my movies make a lot of money. I don’t even know if it matters to me anymore. I’m a bad son to a dead dad. I’ve never not been lonely. I think maybe my heart has been sitting on a bookshelf in this apartment for my whole life, waiting for me to come find it.</em></p><p>Instead he blurts out, “I’m famous.”</p><p><a>“Célèbre? Toi?”</a> she asks, looking at him skeptically. His cheeks heat.</p><p>“I mean, not <em>famous,</em> but...yeah. Famous.”</p><p>She thinks for a minute, and then her face breaks out into a mischievous smile. She types. The Google translate woman asks, “You want to stay here tonight, right?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>She types again. “Are you famous enough that the press would buy photos of you?”</p><p>He nods again, not seeing where she’s going with this.</p><p>She types. The voice tells him, “If I let a stranger stay in my apartment, I need some kind of insurance. If you want to sleep here, I get to take a photo of you wearing that.” Her eyes twinkle. The mischievous grin hasn’t dissipated.</p><p>“Okay,” Ben says. He’s fairly certain he would do anything she asked of him at this point. Before he can think better of it, she raises her phone and snaps a picture. He probably looks like a deer in headlights. She could very plausibly sell it with the story that he got drunk or high out of his mind, stripped, and wrapped himself in a sheet.</p><p>She looks down at her phone and smiles. <a>“Très bien,”</a> she says.</p><p>“Good,” he replies.</p><p>She types something, and the voice translates, “I think you’re too big for my sofa.”</p><p>He takes her phone and types, <em>I can sleep on the floor.</em> But instead of hitting the button to make the woman’s voice read the translation aloud, he sounds out the French haltingly: “Jey pucks dormer par ter.”</p><p>She frowns in confusion and reaches for the phone. She types. “Why didn’t you make the phone read it?”</p><p>He takes it back and types, <em>I want to sound like a man to you.</em> He reads phonetically: “Jey vucks ressemblair ah un hum pour twa.”</p><p>She takes the phone back, slowly. She types, but instead of having Google read it aloud, she sounds out, “Why?”</p><p>He can’t answer, he just looks at her.</p><p>She asks again, in halting English, “Who are you?”</p><p>He doesn’t know what to say.</p><p>She looks down from his heated stare and types. She reads, “Do you want to touch me?” She looks up at him and repeats, “Do you want to touch me, Ben?”</p><p>He shudders but doesn’t move. “Oui.”</p><p>She types, and reads, “Do you want to touch my ankle?” She stretches her foot out to rest in his lap. Her nightshirt slides up her thigh.</p><p>It’s laughable, to think that he thought he was tired. He’s never been more awake. He could run fifty miles. “Oui.”</p><p>When his hand meets her skin, it’s hotter than he expected. She’s the summer, and his fingers slide over the arch of her foot to trace the jutting bone of her ankle. When he looks up, she’s watching.</p><p>She types something, and reads, “Do you want to touch my calf?”</p><p>“Oui.” His hand finds the curve of hard muscle.</p><p>She types. “Do you want to touch my knee?”</p><p>“Oui.” He caresses her kneecap, and though he doesn’t know if it’s allowed, he bends down and places a kiss just above it, almost on her thigh. He looks up, questioning.</p><p>Her eyes are dark. She looks down and types. She sounds out, “I theenk you’re too big for my sofa.” He waits, watching her. She types again, and then says, “But not my bed.”</p><p>She slides her foot off his lap to the floor and stands. She leans over him and deliberately frees the corner of the sheet from where he tucked it in.</p><p>When he stands to follow her, he leaves the sheet behind. They won’t need it.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Trouvé | Found</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><em>Note:</em> As in the first chapter, for French lines that aren’t translated into English in the story, desktop/laptop users can mouse over the hyperlinked text for a translation if you prefer!</p><p>Moodboard by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nancylovesreylo">Nancylovesreylo</a>.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>His back is propped up on pillows against the wall as she rides him. She rests both hands on his chest, at times devastatingly lightly and at times pressing hard for leverage. He puts his hands on the undersides of her thighs, intending to help her in her efforts, but she grabs them and slides them both to her clit. He follows her wordless instructions without hesitation, using one thumb to press on the other to press on her firmly enough that her lips part in an involuntary <em>O</em> of surprise, then ecstasy, and her cunt clenches around him harder than he would’ve thought possible.</p><p>She accepts her orgasms from him as her due, with no thanks or fanfare. It’s boggling to think how much of his life he’s wasted doing things that aren’t giving her orgasms. Because this is it: this is the ultimate pursuit. Listening to her breath catch and quicken as the telltale trembling begins. Touching her lips with his fingers as if he could snatch her moan and keep it in his pocket. He’s found his calling.</p><p>She stops every once in a while, with him buried deep inside. She looks at him and she traces his eyebrow and the curve of his nose and his jawline with one finger and she asks, “Who are you?” He just turns his head and nuzzles into her palm, kissing and licking at it until she laughs and rides again.</p><p>“Ben, Ben,” she says over and over. “Ben,” she moans, like she’s tasting his name. And as her tongue curls around the <em>n</em> he kisses it out of her mouth so he can taste it too.</p><p>When it’s over, she lies on top of him, their sweat commingling, until their heart rates slow. She starts to pull away and he murmurs a quiet protest, but it’s just to get her phone from the nightstand. He looks down at her face in the blue-white glow. After a minute, she tosses the phone away and lays her ear back on his chest. Without looking up, she says, “Talk to me.”</p><p>It takes him a second to understand, because she pronounces the<em> l</em> in “talk.” When he starts to speak, his chest rumbles with it and she shivers and burrows closer into him, and he would talk forever if she wanted. He tells her things mundane and profound, trivial and meaningful. Her thumb strokes his shoulder, back and forth, back and forth, and once in a while she turns her head just a little so her lips brush the skin over his breastbone.</p><p>After a while her thumb starts to slow, and he thinks she’s falling asleep so he lowers his voice to scarcely a murmur. When her thumb stops so does he, but her voice comes, sleepy: “Who are you, Ben?”</p><p>This time he knows what to say. “Yours. I’m yours.”</p><p>“Yours,” she repeats. “Yours.” He doesn’t know if she understands or if she’s parroting. Her hot weight covers him like a blanket. He wants to freeze this moment and live inside it.</p><p>Minutes later, after he thinks she’s asleep, she mumbles one word: <a>“Mien.”</a></p><p> </p><p>----------</p><p> </p><p>He tells himself he won’t fall asleep. He needs every minute of her. He had almost resigned himself to walking the streets of Paris all night; if he could do that, he can certainly lie awake all night in her bed. Her chest rises and falls on his abdomen, and he marvels at the creation that is her body. Her sunbaked skin, and the cage of ribs that ever-so-slightly dig into him, and the head on his chest and the brain it contains. One of her hands rests palm-up on the pillow, and when he turns his head he can make out the blue tangle of veins at her wrist.<br/>
<br/>
This is all he wants, ever: her draped on top of him. <em>Oh,</em> what he wouldn’t give to be allowed to want this.<br/>
<br/>
Her hair is so soft, and her breathing so even, and her skin so warm, and his eyelids are <em>so</em> heavy but he just needs...to stay...awake...<br/>
<br/>
He comes to with a jolt.</p><p>It’s still dark out. He can’t tell if it’s been minutes or hours, but he mourns the lost time. She rolled off him at some point and his body turned toward hers, curved in search of her warmth. Not touching, but inches away. He could close the gap, wrap himself around her and pretend that this was forever. He could wake her with open-mouthed kisses to her skin, and maybe she would kiss him back and let him inside and he could give her some new, hot come to replace the old on the inside of her thighs. If he could pause time he would do it now—leave the bed and learn French and then come back and wake her with words that she would understand. Words that would tell her who he is and ask everything about her. Words that would make her love him the way he loves her.</p><p>Because he does love her. If he stopped to think about it he would think it strange, that after a clumsy conversation and a mug of hot chocolate and her coming apart on top of him and <em>Who are you?</em> that his heart would be so entirely hers.</p><p>He can’t stop time, but he can at least use what time he has. He rolls away from her and she lets out a grunt of displeasure. He holds his breath, but she sleeps on.</p><p>He pads back out to the living room, trying to be silent, but the floorboards creak here and there. He retrieves his sheet-toga from the couch and drapes it over himself once more. They never turned off the lamp by the sofa, and it gives enough light that he can make out the words on the spines of the books that line the shelves. At first glance, they seem to be stuffed in with little regard to order—those without room to stand up simply lie on top of their fellows or sneak in diagonally next to the tapered pot of a plant. But as he runs his fingers over the well-loved bindings, he begins to see some system. In places, some semblance of alphabetization exists, if only by the first letter. Travel books are clustered together at knee height on one bookcase, and on the top shelf there’s a row of sixteen books all with purple covers. Of the thousands of books on the shelves, none looks new: either her reading style is particularly destructive or she buys them all used. Or gets them as gifts. He’s jealous of everyone who’s ever had the opportunity to give her a gift.</p><p>After half an hour of searching he begins to despair. He’s worked his way through two bookcases and most of the third. There remain only two shelves, right by the floor and partly blocked by the end of the sofa. He gathers the sheet closer around himself and sits cross-legged on the floor. He scans the second to last shelf. No luck. He takes a deep breath and runs his pointer finger along the row that holds his last hope, his finger accumulating dust as it goes. He has to move the sofa a little, to see the very last few books.</p><p>His heart leaps. A French-Italian dictionary. He’s in the right section. <em>Bescherelle,</em> whatever that is. A French-German dictionary. A French-Russian dictionary. A French-Turkish dictionary? <em>Now</em> it just feels like her foreign language dictionary selection is taunting him. But there it is: pushed back a little, behind the line of the others, wanting him to work to find it.</p><p>A French-English dictionary.</p><p>He pulls it out and opens it, heedless of the dust that rubs off onto his sheet. He thumbs through it and smiles. Now he just needs to figure out what he wants to say.</p><p>As it turns out, finding the dictionary was the easy part, as he’s realized another half hour later as the dawn starts to come through the window. He’s formulated a few ideas, but painstakingly looking up each word is time-consuming, and he doesn’t know the proper order for the words or how to conjugate the verbs.</p><p>He thinks back again and again to sixth grade, when he took one semester of French and one of Spanish. Everyone had to take both and then decide on one language or the other to study for the rest of middle school and beyond. He chose Spanish, and that now ranks as easily the biggest regret of his life.</p><p><em>What does he want to tell her? </em>He could thank her for taking him in. He could say that she’s breathtakingly beautiful, or that her hot chocolate was the best he’s ever had. He could tell her how she felt coming undone on his cock, though it occurs to him that the dictionary might not have the vocabulary he’d need for that one. He never would’ve thought yesterday that he’d miss the Google translate woman, but he does. She’s so capable, so comprehensible. And she sits hidden behind the passcode to Rey’s phone.</p><p>His fingers flip the pages to “love.” <em>Aimer.</em> Then to “I.” <em>Je.</em> And “you.” <em>Tu, toi, or vous.</em> Well, <em>that’s </em>confusing. He tries them out in an undertone, and none feels right in his mouth. <em>Je aimer tu. Je aimer toi. Je aimer vous.</em> It’s <em>te amo </em>in Spanish, of course, but that doesn’t help him now.</p><p>He hears her stir in the bedroom, and he hurriedly gets to his feet and leaves the dictionary in the heap of sheet that he abandons. She’s rubbing her eyes against the daylight that comes in at the window. He pulls the orange linen curtains shut, and she hums her approval but keeps her eyes closed. She just reaches out for him with one imperious arm, the other draped over her eyes. He springs to obey, practically leaping back into bed. She laughs but keeps her eyes closed as her hands find his shoulders and his arms snake around her. It’s not until after he kisses her cheek and her neck and sucks at her earlobe that she draws back to open her eyes and look at him.</p><p>The sunlight through the orange curtains sets the room ablaze—or it may just be her, and her bare skin against his.</p><p>“Ben,” she says with sleepy eyes, by way of greeting.</p><p>“Hi,” he smiles back.</p><p>“Ben,” she repeats, and the corners of her eyes crinkle with her smile. How had he not noticed that crinkle, last night? How much more of her waits for him to discover? He could spend a lifetime studying her and still wonder.</p><p>“Rey,” he answers softly. <em>I love you,</em> he thinks.<em> Je aimer tu. No, that’s definitely not right. Wait! Don’t you have to put the words together when there are two vowels in a row? J’aimer tu?</em></p><p>She touches his lower lip with her fingertips. Then she smiles and leans forward and slides her tongue over it. He tries to kiss her back, but she catches his lip between her teeth and nips. Staking her claim.</p><p>He grunts as the blood rushes south, and he goes to trap her between his arms, but she’s too quick for him: she darts out of bed almost before he realizes it. He rolls over and looks at her. She wears her bare skin like a ballgown, with not a trace of self-consciousness.</p><p>“Prends un bain avec moi?” she says, and the words sound familiar from yesterday but he can’t quite remember what they mean.</p><p>It doesn’t matter, though. Whatever she wants, the answer will be the same: “Yes.”</p><p>She walks out to the living room, and Ben scrambles to follow. When he emerges she’s on her tiptoes in the kitchen corner, reaching for something from a high cabinet shelf. The position sharpens her calf muscles and rounds her ass, and his erection is becoming something of a problem. She grabs a package, puts it down on the counter, and smiles over her shoulder at him as she goes to the bathroom and shuts the door. He hears the rush of water from the tap begin, and <em>that’s</em> what <em>bain</em> means!</p><p>He picks up the package she got out and examines it while he waits. It looks like some sort of brown breakfast cookies dotted with dried fruit. His dick has just started flagging when she emerges, still naked and a little flushed from the steam of the water. The renewed sight of her does nothing to help his state, and as she looks his naked body up and down it doesn’t take long before he’s fully erect again. She darts across the room back to the bedroom, and he’s momentarily uncertain but then she emerges with her phone, typing.</p><p>She reads off the screen. “Take a bath with me?” He nods. <em>That</em> part he got. She looks down at the phone, then back up. “But fuck me first.”</p><p>He almost comes on the spot.</p><p>She walks back toward the bathroom, giving her hips an extra swing that he’s pretty sure wasn’t there before. When she pauses in the doorway and turns back with a teasing smile, he crosses the room with a bound, drops the package of cookies on the tiled floor, and grabs her. She tugs him all the way into the bathroom and he slams the door shut behind them. In half a second, he has her pinned up against the door, devouring her mouth as his cock throbs against her. Without breaking the kiss, she threads one hand through his hair and reaches down with the other to guide his cock between her legs. Not inside her, just nestled at the apex of her thighs between her wet folds, so when he thrusts he rubs back and forth over her clit. It’s almost as good as being inside her, and if this is what she wants this is what he wants too, but after a minute she peers over his shoulder at the rapidly-filling tub and tells him, “Ben, fuck me.” Without hesitation, he picks her up by her ass and he doesn’t even need his hands to help enter her, his cock is so hard and straining for her, it breaches her entrance on its own. He could take it slow, he could torture her with excruciatingly tiny thrusts, and one day he <em>will</em> but today the bathtub is filling, so he slams in and takes her breath away. He’s not going to last long, he knows, but he thinks it’s okay because neither is she. Her breath quickens in the way that he’s memorized already, and he cradles her ass with one arm and protects her back from the rough door with the other as he fucks up into her over and over.</p><p>“Yes,” she says, “Ben. Yes.” She looks him straight in the eyes, and it’s his permission to let go, finally, and he comes inside her with a groan as her breathing stutters and she claws at his shoulders. He clings to her through it, and he would cling to her forever except that the bath is ready, so he reluctantly sets her down so she can go turn off the tap. When she bends over he sees his come trickling out of her, and he has to look away because it’s too much. She steps into the tub and lowers herself into the hot water with a contented moan, then beckons him to join her. She spreads her legs wide in an invitation for him to sit between, and he doesn’t think twice before climbing in and leaning back against her. She wraps her legs around his waist as her hands rub soothingly over the muscles in his arms.</p><p>She talks to him, now, the way he did for her last night. He catches a few words now and then that he thinks may be the same in English. <a><em>Grand. Souvenir. Reste.</em></a> She breaks off bits of cookies from the package and feeds them to him. He eats everything she gives him and licks her fingers.</p><p>He’s bring supremely selfish, he knows. Right around now someone is discovering his un-slept-in bed at the hotel, a flurry of texts and calls are being exchanged, and the realization is sinking in that he never made it back from the restaurant. His team will snap into action. Someone will interrogate the front desk staff at the hotel, someone will jump in a taxi to the restaurant, and others will scope out places where he may have been likely to go. In the scramble, event and interview plans will be cancelled or postponed at supreme inconvenience to dozens. Ben can’t bring himself to care, maybe because it’s been years since he last let himself be selfish and he feels like he’s overdue. But more likely because none of it feels real from inside this apartment. What happens outside it is of no consequence, and he pities the millions and billions of people bustling around attending to things that don’t matter. Everything in human history has led up to him and her in this bathtub.</p><p>As her voice washes over him, the waterline laps at his chin, and he strokes her legs lazily, he lets his mind wander back to the translation. <em>Is it toi, tu, or vous? </em>He thinks she’s using <em>tu</em> and <em>toi</em> to speak to him, so at least that rules out <em>vous,</em> hopefully. It seems like this language has more words than strictly necessary to convey <em>you.</em></p><p>He’s narrowed it down to <em>J’aimer toi</em> as the most likely candidate. Even if it’s wrong, which he’s almost certain it is, at least it should get the message across. She’s moved on to massaging his scalp as she speaks. The water is starting to cool. As he listens, she says, <a>“C’est fou, mais il me semble que je t’aime.”</a></p><p>He sits up so suddenly that a wave of water splashes over the side of the tub. “Rey! That’s it!” He tries to turn to face her and only half succeeds, wedging himself sideways. “Je t’aime! That’s I love you! Je t’aime! I kept on trying to remember, and I could only think of ‘te amo!’ Why did I study Spanish, when I could’ve studied French so I could tell you I love you! Je t’aime!”</p><p>Turned awkwardly half-toward her, he can’t read her expression. She doesn’t look happy, nor sad or distressed. She looks...like she’s considering. “Ben,” she asks finally, “¿hablas español?”</p><p>“Yes,” he replies in Spanish, “I took it throughout high school, and my uncle—well not really my <em>uncle,</em> he was my dad’s friend—spoke it with me, and I use it a lot in California, so I speak it pretty well...”</p><p>“Yo también,” she replies. <em>Me too.</em></p><p>“Oh!” he answers in Spanish. “That’s funny, because I guess I assumed that if you didn’t speak English, you wouldn’t...”</p><p>“Ben!” she interrupts, unsuccessfully trying to hide the grin that’s spreading across her face.</p><p>It takes him a second: the realization. When it finally dawns on him, he lights up.</p><p>He leaps out of the tub, sloshing more water out, and scoops her out and dries them both off, and then they open the curtains and crawl back in bed and tell each other everything all over again, in Spanish. All the mundane and profound, the trivial and meaningful. And Rey doesn’t have to ask <em>Who are you?</em> because he tells her, and she tells him, and they understand.</p><p>And when they next make love slowly in the golden light of the afternoon, they know the words.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I <em>very</em> much hope that you enjoyed! ❤️</p><p>I'm on <a href="https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2">Twitter</a>!</p>
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